Kayaking at Columbia Glacier
By Lukas:
Why should you visit Alaska? There are several reasons, we already covered during the trip: the vast
landscapes and forests, the arctic tundra, and the wildlife. Two however didn’t get covered much so far:
The Pacific Ocean and the hundreds of Alaska’s glaciers.
That’s what we wanted to see for our second half of the trip. We figured that a great place for both
would be the town of Valdez, located in a very narrow valley at the coast, featuring pacific rainforest,
plenty of fish, other wildlife, and most importantly: many glaciers nearby.
We arrived in Valdez in the afternoon and decided to wild camp at the glacier lake of the Valdez
Glacier. This Glacier slowly flows down from the mountain peaks and ends on land in a lake of its own
molten ice. We camped at the shore of the lake, where many small icebergs were floating close by. A
wonderful place to sleep and drink beer!
But the real highlight happened the next day: we went for sea-kayaking at the Columbia Glacier. We had
to take a small boat for 2 hours from Valdez, passing by the mountain sites covered in rainforest, where
we saw super cute sea-otters, seals, salmon, and birds.
The Columbia Glacier is a so-called tidewater glacier, which has its face (the front) sitting in the
ocean water. This provides for a spectacular setting: Due to the warmer (but still very cold) and
saltier seawater, the glacier ice gets destabilized quickly and a lot of ice breaks off the glacier (the
“calving”) and floats out of the bay of the glacier. The size of the ice pieces ranges between a few
dozens of centimeters to huge icebergs. And that is the real beauty of the setting! Kayaking between the
icebergs towards the face of the glacier!
The boat had to maneuver through the ice and brought us quite close to the glacier, but we had to kayak
the last few kilometers. This was stunning, you could always hear and see the glacier calf in the
distance and you could even notice the calving-induced waves flowing towards our kayaks.
On some of the bigger icebergs, groups of seals were relaxing, and we could approach them closely.
Sometimes, one of the seals even dived close to the kayaks, eventually popping out its head from the
water and looking around: they really appear like cute water puppies!
We also learned quite a bit from our tour guides: tidewater glaciers usually build up mass over
thousands of years until some external event, like a flood etc. starts the calving process. Then, the
glacier retracts quickly over a few decades (it loses a few kilometers per year!) until no more ice is
floating in the water, but instead the glacier only rests on land. From there, the building up process
starts again. This means, that we visited the Columbia Glacier during a super small and special period
of its life-cycle. However, that natural cycle is in danger: due to man-made global warming, the
upper part of the glacier - that starts high up in the mountains - lost up to 50% of its original mass.
Therefore, it is not clear, if there will ever be enough ice again to restart the natural cycle of this
tidewater glacier.
This loss also applies to almost all other Alaskan glaciers, meaning that here it is impossible to NOT
see the impacts of global warming. But yeah, unfortunately, people are generally quite good at
ignoring.
We returned back to the city and drove half an hour to spend the night wild camping on top of a
spectacular mountain ridge with a great view down to the valley of Valdez. For dinner, we wanted to have
freshly caught salmon (Valdez is a salmon fishing hotspot), but like EVERYWHERE ELSE IN ALASKA, we found
it impossible to find fresh, non-frozen salmon in the shops, as all salmon gets immediately processed in
industrial plants. THAT might actually be the biggest disappointment of our whole trip!!
BTW: Glacier kayaking is super expensive, but definitely worth the investment!
By Tomas:
Ráno jsme byli nastoupeni v 8:00 na výlet. Celkem se na výlet přihlásilo asi 12 účastníků.
Byli nám přiděleni dva instruktoři, týpek Jared, relativně standardně vypadající Aljaštan, a holka Ilene,
která byla typická afektovaná Američanka, která se tvářila, že jsme nejlepší na světě a všechno je úplně
perfektní. Dostali jsme vodotěsné bundy a kalhoty, holínky, pádla a dvojkajaky. Po základní instruktáži
jsme nasedli na loď a dvě hodiny se plavili směrem k ledovci. Čím jsme byli blíže, tím teplota klesala.
V blízkosti ledovce se kapitán začal vyhýbat plovoucím krám, až jsme se dostali ke kamenité pláži.
Vyložili jsme kajaky na souš a postupně do nich opatrně nalezli. Na pozadí bylo slyšet hřmění způsobené
úlomky čela ledovce padajících do moře. Vyrazili jsme na cestu směrem k ledovci. Nebylo to nijak daleko,
kolem 3 km. Kolem nás bylo ve vodě spousta ledu a vyžadovalo to spoustu manévrování. Ledovec i kry byly
velice fotogenické, tak jsme stříleli jeden snímek za druhým. Po hodině a půl pádlování jsme byli něco
přes kilometr od čela obrovského ledovce, který sahal přes 70 metrů do výšky. Dále jsme již nesměli.
Zakotvili jsme na pláži, dali si obídek a pak nám Jared vyprávěl o místních ledovcích a horninách. Dali
jsme do krabičky od oběda kus ledu, který se nám měl velice vyplatit v pozdějších hodinách.
Po dlouhé pauze jsme se plavili zpět k lodi, naložili kajaky a vybavení a jeli jsme zpět do Valdez. Zpět
jsme byli kolem sedmé večerní a už se na nás začal projevovat hlad a únava. Rozloučili jsme se s
instruktory, dokoupili zásoby v místní sámošce. Zase neměli lososa, tak jsme se spokojili se steaky. Za
městem jsme zastavili u zajímavosti jménem Wier.
Wier je zařízení, které nepouští lososy zpátky do jejich řečiště, jelikož díky umělému oplodňování
lososů se tam všichni prostě nevejdou. Vedle wieru je velká hala, kde se provádí umělé tření lososů a
odkud jsou vypouštěni zpět do oceánu.
Asi půl hodiny za městem jsme zastavili na vyhlídce na údolí. Už bylo hodně pozdě, tak jsme se rozhodli
nocovat. Dokonce se i trochu otevíraly výhledy na údolí a nedaleké ledovce. Vzali jsme kus ledu od
Columbia Glacier, dali ho do plecháčku a vychutnali si prvotřídní Aljašskou whiskey on the rocks.